Charlotte
Charlotte stared up at the ceiling, unable to sleep. At Lowood, she’d slept lined up in rows with at least thirty others girls, and she’d fallen asleep each night to a chorus of their fretful sighs and gurgles. At Haworth she’d had her own more comfortable bed to rest in, a quilt her mother had sewn for her, and her sisters all cozy in the same room. When they couldn’t sleep they’d told one another stories, whispered tales of dragons and the handsome knights who arrived to slay them. And after her sisters had gone back to school, Jane had taken Emily’s bed. Jane had snored a little. (Don’t tell her. It was hardly snoring. It was very delicate.) Charlotte had found the sound immensely comforting. But now everyone had gone: Bran to the parsonage, Emily and Anne to Lowood, Jane to London on some vastly important mission for the Society, and Charlotte found herself in a squeaky little bed in the teacher’s cottage in the village. Alone. No one had ever been so alone, she thought.
And Mr. Blackwood was dead.
She turned onto her side. A tear rolled across her nose and dropped soundlessly onto the pillow, which was already quite damp.
Mr. Blackwood was dead. Part of her would not believe it. How could Mr. Rochester have bested him? How had it happened? How was it possible that she would never see him again?
She stifled a sob. She’d never see him walk that way he did when he meant business, his strides long and his shoulders thrown back, his black coat billowing out behind.
She’d never see the glitter of determination in his dark eyes.
He’d never again offer his hand to help her down from the carriage.
He’d never make tea. Or catch a ghost. Or play charades. Or argue with her.
He’d never say, “Go home, Miss Brontë.”
The tears flowed freely now. It was aggravating, the way she could not seem to stop herself crying over Alexander Blackwood. He was just a boy, wasn’t he? They’d had no attachment to speak of. What she’d felt for Mr. Blackwood hadn’t been romance, as Charlotte had previously defined romance. There had been no stolen glances—not that she would have been able to see them. No flirtations. No tortured yearning of her soul, the way Jane felt for Mr. Rochester. No, between Charlotte and Alexander there had only been the highest level of regard, a camaraderie, a mutual enjoyment of each other’s company. But when she’d heard Mr. Wellesley say that Mr. Blackwood had been killed, something had seemed to break inside her, and it remained broken day after day. So she wept, and after the tears came a fierce ache in her chest, even worse than the crying.
Our Charlotte was floundering in the true depths of despair, dear reader, although this time she felt no urge to write about it. This time it felt like she could clearly see her entire life stretched before her, and it was a lonely life, a tragic one, where the people she loved all died, first her mother, her two older sisters, then her father, now Mr. Blackwood, and soon perhaps her sisters would succumb to the Graveyard Disease at school—Anne was always coughing these days, Emily looked pale—and Bran was so accident-prone, something could happen, and then she’d be alone forever. Or maybe she’d die young, too.
She wiped her eyes. It was absurd, but what she wished for most right now was the ability to simply speak to Mr. Blackwood again. You should tell Mr. Blackwood all that’s happened, some wayward part of her brain kept insisting. She had numerous questions she’d like to ask him. What was his opinion, for instance, on the silly way that she kept crying over him?
She took a shuddering breath. Crying, she told herself sternly, does not indicate that you are weak. Since birth, it has always been a sign that you are alive.
The shutters rattled. Outside an October storm was blowing in. The wind was escalating into a howl, an eerie, lonesome sound. When she was a little girl that Yorkshire wind had frightened her. She’d known it was only the wind, but her overactive imagination had produced a theory that the sound was the ghosts of England’s past, a menagerie of the dead stretching back through history, all of them come to bang at her window. But she hadn’t known about ghosts then. She’d never seen a ghost, but what Charlotte had gleaned from this whole Society experience was that ghosts were just like regular people, with typical thoughts and feelings. They were dead, was all. It was almost like nothing else had changed. If you could see them, that is.
Wait. Hold on.
Charlotte sat up. She thought she might cry again, but what came out was a hoarse laugh. Then she scrambled out of bed and hurriedly began to dress. She’d had an idea, and this was the kind of idea that really couldn’t wait until morning.
“Bran!” Charlotte banged on the door of the parsonage again. The wind whipped her loose hair into her face. “Wake up, Bran!”
She heard footsteps on the stairs. Then the door opened a crack and a face appeared—her brother’s, she assumed, although she couldn’t see; her glasses were streaked with rain.
“Charlie!” he exclaimed.
“I have asked you repeatedly not to call me Charlie,” she chided as he ushered her inside.
“Well, you look like a madwoman,” he observed, a hint of worry in his voice, like he was considering that she might, in fact, have gone mad at last. “It’s the middle of the night.”
“I’m aware of what time it is, Bran.” Charlotte cleaned her glasses on his nightshirt and lifted them to her face. Bran’s red hair was sticking straight out to one side and there was a pillow crease in his cheek. His eyes were only half open. His own glasses were terribly smudged, so she grabbed them and cleaned them, too. Then she went up to his room, pulled his battered old suitcase from under his bed, and started packing his things for a journey.
“Charlie, am I going somewhere?” he asked from the doorway.
“We. We are going somewhere.” She closed the suitcase and straightened. “You have a horse, right? Father’s horse?”
Bran was shaking his head. “I have a horse, but I can’t leave. I’m the parson now. The townspeople need me.”
“I need you,” she said. “They’ll get by.”
“What if someone dies and needs a funeral? Or wants to get married? Or needs me to pray over a sick child? And I have a sermon to give.”
Charlotte gave her brother a Look. They both knew nobody was going to miss his sermons.
“Oh, all right.” He sighed. He’d learned over the years not to cross Charlotte when she had her mind set on something. “Where are we going?”
“Why, to Thornfield Hall, of course,” she said as if it was most obvious.
Bran frowned. “Thornfield Hall? What for?”
“To learn what happened, firsthand. Which is why I need you, brother.”
“Why . . . do you need me?” he asked.
“To talk to Mr. Blackwood.” She couldn’t help a hopeful smile. “Because you’ll be able to see him, and I won’t.”
Bran gasped. “Of course! Alexander could be a ghost!” He was finally catching on.
Charlotte nodded. “We’ll find out what happened with Rochester. I suppose we’ll have to be careful, since Rochester is probably still there. But we’ll locate Mr. Blackwood, and you’ll talk to him. And he’ll . . .” Her voice wavered with the blasted tears. “He’ll tell us what to do.”
She could see by his expression that Bran didn’t think this was the wisest idea. But he didn’t argue. Instead, he went to the desk in the corner and wrote a note to post on the parsonage door, to the people of the village, explaining that he’d be back shortly.
“We will be back shortly, won’t we?” he asked her.
She had no idea when they’d be back. It all depended on what they discovered when they got to their destination. “Of course,” she answered. “We’ll be back before you know it.”
They reached Thornfield Hall a day or so later, only to find the great house in total ruin. There’d obviously been a fire—the stones were black and the smell of smoke was heavy in the air. The front of the house was still standing, but it looked fragile, as if the wind would momentarily blow it in. All the windowpanes were smashed, and the roof had collapsed. All that remained of the once grand and imposing structure was a wrecked shell.
Bran and Charlotte stood looking at the place, silently horrified. Then Charlotte whispered, “Find him, Bran,” and they picked their way around the edges of the house, Bran calling out, “Mr. Blackwood! Are you there? We’d like to speak with you, Mr. Blackwood.”
Charlotte’s heart beat madly the entire time. On the journey, she’d composed a little speech she’d give to Mr. Blackwood, which went something like this:
Mr. Blackwood. Alexander. I would like to inform you that you are (you were, I suppose, so sorry) the keenest, most attractive, most intelligent and thoroughly engaging boy that I have ever met, and I am filled with sorrow on account of your untimely demise.
And then she’d ask her numerous questions about his death and Mr. Rochester and what they could do to bring the nefarious villain to justice.
But Mr. Blackwood never appeared. Bran called and called for more than an hour, and Charlotte joined him, but Bran couldn’t perceive any ghostly presence at Thornfield Hall. Not a single spirit came out to meet them.
It was the greatest disappointment yet.
“I’m sorry, Charlie,” Bran said as they trudged back to where the horse was grazing.
“It’s quite all right.” She didn’t cry this time. “Obviously Mr. Blackwood has moved on. He’s in a better place now. I wouldn’t wish him to be a ghost just so I could . . .” She swallowed. “I’m glad for him.”
“I’m sorry, Charlie,” Bran said again, slinging his arm around her.
“Thank you, Bran. Let’s go home.”
They got a room for the night at the nearest inn. At dinnertime, they walked to the local pub and Charlotte gathered information regarding the ruin of Thornfield Hall. It was hard to get a straight story from anyone—the rumors abounded. After an hour of interviews with the local townspeople, this is what Charlotte had been able to ascertain:
Mr. Rochester had his wife locked up in the attic. (She knew that, of course.)
Mr. Rochester had tried to marry his governess, but it had all gone afoul when it was discovered that he had his wife locked up in the attic. (She knew that, too. Firsthand.)
People felt very sorry for Mr. Rochester and held a lot of mixed but largely negative opinions about this Jane Eyre person—who had reached above her station, who had deliberately set to entangle poor Mr. Rochester, a treacherous Eve type, she was, a tempting siren, but also small and plain and utterly unremarkable in every way. (Charlotte held her tongue. Barely.)
The events that followed were thus:
Mr. Rochester had gone a bit mad, after his failed attempt at bigamy, and he’d lit his own house on fire, killing everyone inside: Rochester, the wife, and the girl, all together.
OR
Mr. Rochester had burned his house down in order to dispose of his wife, and then he and the girl had gone to live in the South of France.
OR
The wife had set the place on fire, and succeeded in doing away with both herself and Mr. Rochester. No one knew what had become of the girl. But Mr. Rochester was most certainly dead.
OR
Mr. Rochester was most certainly alive. He’d nobly tried to save his wife from the fire, but she’d leapt to her death from the roof of the house. Mr. Rochester had been trapped in the inferno, and part of the house had collapsed upon him, but he’d been pulled out very much alive.
BUT
He’d lost one eye and the vision in the other, therefore being made totally blind. Helpless as a wee lamb. A beggar on the streets of London now. Very sad.
OR
His hand was crushed and had to be amputated. Now he had a hook and had been last seen applying for the job of a pirate.
OR
All of the above. (Somehow.)
As a storyteller, Charlotte liked the “nobly trying to save his wife” version of the tale best. It felt like the proper ending to redeem a man (sort of). But none of the townspeople had any knowledge whatsoever of a Mr. Blackwood. It was impossible to tell, under these circumstances, if Mr. Rochester was alive or dead or possibly a pirate. And she was no closer to finding out what had transpired with Mr. Blackwood.
“He’s not dead,” Bran said suddenly.
“You think so? Is he a pirate, then? Or a beggar? A pirate is a bit far-fetched, in my opinion. Just because one loses a hand doesn’t make a person qualified for piracy.”
“Not Rochester. Mr. Blackwood.” Bran was staring at an empty space just past Charlotte’s right shoulder.
Her breath left her. “Mr. Blackwood’s not dead?”
Bran shushed her. “I’m trying to listen. To the ghost.”
“The ghost?”
“The one standing right behind you. Mr. Rochester.”
Charlotte glanced behind her, but of course saw nothing. “You’re talking to Mr. Rochester? So he died in the fire, after all?”
Bran shook his head. “Mr. Rochester, it turns out, was possessed by a ghost. Apparently he’s not a bad fellow at all, but was being held a prisoner in his own body.”
“By whom?”
“By Mr. Rochester.”
Charlotte frowned.
“The ghost of his older brother,” Bran clarified. “During his clash with Mr. Rochester, Mr. Blackwood discovered the possession and was able to separate the man from his talisman, thereby releasing Mr. Rochester from his spiritual bondage.”
“That sounds just like Mr. Blackwood,” Charlotte agreed.
“Afterward, Mr. Blackwood departed for London.”
Charlotte was crying again. She pulled out a handkerchief. “Thank heavens. But how, then, was the house destroyed?”
“Grace Poole, who was also apparently employed by Mr. Rochester—the evil one, I mean—burned down the house in an attempt to do away with the Rochesters, but they had already escaped.”
“But I thought you said Mr. Rochester was a ghost? The one speaking to you, in fact.”
“Oh. No.” Bran smiled apologetically. “The ghost who is speaking to me now is also a Mr. Rochester, but not the Mr. Rochester. This is Mr. Rochester the eldest, our Mr. Rochester’s father. He’s been haunting this pub for years, apparently, ever since Mr. Rochester, the brother, died and took possession of Mr. Rochester—the one we know.”
There were, in Charlotte’s opinion, entirely too many Mr. Rochesters. But that was of no matter. Mr. Blackwood was alive! In London! She blew her nose, put her handkerchief away, and stood up.
“Well done, Bran,” she said to her brother. “Excellent job ferreting out all of this vital information. Now we should go.”
“To London, I suppose,” Bran said faintly. “To find Mr. Blackwood.”
“To find Mr. Blackwood,” Charlotte said, beaming. “And to talk to Jane. The story this ghost has told you does not match up at all with the Duke of Wellington’s account. I fear that Jane is being led astray. She could be in danger. We need to get to the bottom of the matter immediately.”
“All right,” sighed Bran. “I’ll get the horse.”
Upon arriving in London, they went straightaway to Mr. Blackwood’s flat, only to find that Mr. Blackwood was no longer residing there. A young lady had moved in, the neighbors reported. A small young woman, they said. Plain. Utterly unremarkable in every way.
They stood idly across the street for several hours waiting for Jane. Presently she arrived in a carriage that bore the crest of the Society on the door. She had a large garment bag draped over her arm and a strained expression, as if she was bravely facing up to an unpleasant chore. She ascended the stairs to the flat and disappeared. Charlotte and Bran crossed the street as if to follow, but at the last moment a cloaked figure darted out from an alleyway and pulled them both into the shadows.
Charlotte was about to scream, but the man clapped his hand over her mouth. “It’s me,” he whispered urgently. He held his other hand out to Bran, who’d just taken a wild swing at him. “It’s me, Branwell! I must speak with you.” He threw back the hood to reveal his face.
It was Mr. Blackwood. Trembling, Charlotte lifted her glasses to her eyes and drank in the sight of him. His appearance was more unkempt than usual: his clothing rumpled, his dark hair tousled, his face unshaven. He even smelled a bit like the docks. But Charlotte threw her arms around him. “Oh, Mr. Blackwood,” she cried. “I am so . . . pleased to see you again. We were told you were dead.”
“Wellington tried to kill me,” he affirmed. All at once they both became aware that they were holding each other. Mr. Blackwood gazed down into Charlotte’s face, the corner of his mouth tucking up into a smile. “He failed, obviously. I am . . . pleased to see you as well, Miss Brontë.”
Charlotte nodded mutely. For a moment neither of them spoke.
“I saw the ghost of Mr. Rochester,” Bran announced proudly. “He told me you’d be in London, and here you are.”
Charlotte and Mr. Blackwood stepped away from each other. Mr. Blackwood frowned. “The ghost of Mr. Rochester? How’s that? I saw Mr. Rochester alive and well but an hour ago. He and Mrs. Rochester saved my life.”
“He means the ghost of the senior Mr. Rochester,” Charlotte explained. “Mr. Rochester’s father. I know. It’s confusing.”
“Oh. Well, yes, here I am. In London,” Mr. Blackwood said, although he didn’t seem entirely pleased about it. “Unfortunately, I cannot say I’ve made much progress in my new mission to foil the duke’s plans and avenge my father’s death. And it seems that Wellington has replaced me with Miss Eyre in order to accomplish his schemes.”
“So Wellington is the true villain?” Charlotte thought this was a marvelous twist in her story. And also, of course, terrible news.
“The most nefarious,” Mr. Blackwood muttered. “We believe he means to possess the king. I’ve been trying to get to Miss Eyre, to warn her, but she’s always shadowed by the Society.” He jerked his head to one side to indicate a pair of large, surly looking fellows lurking on the corner just outside of Mr. Blackwood’s former flat.
“I could warn her,” Charlotte volunteered. “Wellington doesn’t know that I know of his treachery. I could simply pay a visit to Jane. A social visit. She is my dear friend, after all. What do friends do if not visit each other from time to time?”
“That would be most helpful,” Mr. Blackwood said.
Charlotte blushed. “I’ll go right now.”
Before she could take a step, however, the door to Mr. Blackwood’s former flat opened and Jane popped out in what was possibly the most extravagant gown that Charlotte had ever beheld. The entire dress was simply huge. Jane teetered dangerously several times as she made her way down the stairs, but always managed to catch herself. At the bottom she straightened her hat—the same rose hue as the dress with several bows and a large white feather sticking out the front. Then she pulled up the edge of one elbow-length white glove, and squeezed herself through the door into the waiting Society carriage.
The two surly looking fellows stepped up onto the back of the carriage.
“To Saint James’s Palace?” the driver asked, and one of the surly men confirmed the address.
“This is it,” Mr. Blackwood whispered urgently. “She’s going to the king. We have to stop her.”
The driver cracked his whip, and the carriage pulled away. They watched it helplessly as it swiftly disappeared around a corner.
“Well then, it’s a fine night to pay a visit to the palace, wouldn’t you say?” Charlotte suggested.
A muscle ticked in Mr. Blackwood’s jaw. “Yes,” he said. “A very fine night, indeed.”